Particle imaging and characterization

The new Mor­pholo­gi range of auto­mat­ed sta­t­ic imag­ing sys­tems for par­ti­cle char­ac­ter­i­za­tion from Malvern Pan­a­lyt­i­cal – Mor­pholo­gi 4 and Mor­pholo­gi 4‑ID – has been unveiled. Built on the mar­ket-lead­ing suc­cess of pre­vi­ous sys­tems, the 2018 iF design award-win­ning Mor­pholo­gi 4 and Mor­pholo­gi 4‑ID offer unique­ly pow­er­ful tools for the rapid, auto­mat­ed com­po­nent-spe­cif­ic mea­sure­ment of par­ti­cle size, shape and chem­i­cal com­po­si­tion. They deliv­er sub­stan­tial improve­ments in mea­sure­ment speed, image def­i­n­i­tion, and the range of mate­ri­als that can be suc­cess­ful­ly ana­lyzed. Offer­ing sharp­er and faster par­ti­cle size and shape mea­sure­ments, the instru­ments add val­ue to prod­uct devel­op­ment, trou­bleshoot­ing and QC, par­tic­u­lar­ly in ana­lyt­i­cal envi­ron­ments where a deep­er under­stand­ing of a process and/or sam­ple is required, such as dur­ing the devel­op­ment and pro­cess­ing of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, met­al pow­ders and bat­tery materials.
The Mor­pholo­gi 4 is a ful­ly auto­mat­ed sys­tem for char­ac­ter­iz­ing par­ti­cles rang­ing in size from less than one micron up to a mil­lime­ter and beyond. Com­pared to its pre­de­ces­sor, it offers quick­er mea­sure­ment – a time sav­ing of around 25% – while deliv­er­ing sim­pler, more intu­itive method devel­op­ment and greater par­ti­cle def­i­n­i­tion. A key fea­ture is Sharp Edge, a new auto­mat­ed seg­men­ta­tion / thresh­old­ing algo­rithm that makes it eas­i­er to detect and define par­ti­cles. Mea­sure­ment sen­si­tiv­i­ty is fur­ther boost­ed by the 18 MP cam­era and by enclo­sure of the sam­ple dur­ing imag­ing. These advances make it pos­si­ble to accu­rate­ly mea­sure light-sen­si­tive and low-con­trast sam­ples, such as pro­teins and cer­tain min­er­al and chem­i­cal species, and deliv­er enhanced shape para­me­ter sen­si­tiv­i­ty for all types of sam­ple. This makes it pos­si­ble to detect the sub­tle dif­fer­ences that are essen­tial for rig­or­ous process and prod­uct opti­miza­tion and robust sup­ply chain management.
The Mor­pholo­gi 4‑ID deliv­ers Mor­pho­log­i­cal­ly-Direct­ed Raman Spec­troscopy (MDRS), inte­grat­ing the sta­t­ic imag­ing capa­bil­i­ties of the Mor­pholo­gi 4 with Raman spec­troscopy to enable the com­po­nent-spe­cif­ic mor­pho­log­i­cal char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of dif­fer­ent chem­i­cal species in a blend. Offer­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly faster spec­tral acqui­si­tion times than the pre­vi­ous mod­el – a time reduc­tion of up to 80% – it also allows acqui­si­tion con­di­tions to be cus­tomized to the sam­ple. This enhanced con­trol, com­bined with an extend­ed spec­tral range, max­i­mizes the range of mate­ri­als that can be iden­ti­fied and/or dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed with­in a mix­ture. The instru­ment is ful­ly auto­mat­ed and is designed to allow both par­ti­cle char­ac­ter­i­za­tion sci­en­tists with lim­it­ed spec­troscopy expe­ri­ence, and more expe­ri­enced spec­tro­scopists to gain an in-depth under­stand­ing of their par­tic­u­late samples.